Have you ever heard “I don’t have time to train my staff”? As Talent and Development Professionals, we are faced with some version of this. How do we show the value in investing time and the dividends in the end, when the very people we are speaking to have piles of papers, thousands of emails, and people interrupting your meeting for a “more pressing” item? I feel strongly we need to invest our time to save our time; meaning that the more time we invest in training our team upfront, the more time we will have down the road. This allows for our team to be capable of doing their jobs allowing us to focus on our own job. I know firsthand this is easier said than done.

I am walking through a major system implementation. We are dealing with change management, process stabilization, and role clarity while growing exponentially. It feels like I am drinking from of a fire hose sometimes. It is easy to get lost in the sheer volume of tasks and needs. I noticed that rather than teaching my team how to do something and walking through the process with them, I was doing it for them because I had too much to do. I, as a Talent and Development professional, did the very thing I coach people not to do. I had no time to train and did not know how to manage myself out of the mess I had created. I was overwhelmed and my production level was down, but I knew I could get through this. I just had to “tough it out.” When I shared this story with one of my fellow board members she simply said “at what cost?” I took this philosophically—I was becoming fatigued, disengaged, and burnt out. Then, the cost of my team redoing the same tasks due to lack of training was weighing on them too and with the amount of overtime we were literally costing the company money!

I saved my excuses from lack of time and found time to make this a priority. I will admit it was hard. I think I was able to do this because it mattered to me that my staff were trained and felt good about coming into work every day. I wanted them to leave at a normal time. It was uncomfortable for me to train on something I was still learning myself. Soon our week of training became an exciting time rather than a dreaded time as we began to focus on solutions rather than problems. Over time, I realized that there were still “buggy” things in our system that end users were experiencing, but I was no longer the one people were coming to for assistance; they were reaching out to my team instead! I started to gain my time back and started to leave the office each day at a more normal time.

I think I share this vulnerable story because as Talent and Development Professionals, it can be very frustrating hearing that people do not have time to train, mentor, or coach. We know that investing time saves us time. Not only does it save us time, we could list hundreds of other things it improves: morale, engagement, innovation, retention, etc. I can see the soapbox we can get on with spreadsheets, infographics, and graphs proving the value. I share this because it was a simple question with such impact that made a difference.

In giving context to content, one is best served by applying a learner-centric, brain-friendly mindset. This immersive, experiential session will apply principles from neuroscience, design-thinking, appreciative inquiry, and critical thinking.

--------------------------------Win a Free Chapter Meeting Entry! All you have to do is share your feedback.---------------------

We want your feedback on our monthly chapter meetings! Your feedback gives us insight and helps us make improvements to better meet your learning & development needs. After each chapter meeting you attend, you will receive a link via email to a brief survey (11 quick questions to be exact!). It should take you less than five minutes to complete. And as a bonus, at the end of the survey, you have an opportunity to enter into a drawing for a free chapter meeting. Who doesn’t love free stuff?!?

Special Interest Groups and Meetings

Interested in joining a small group around various talent development interests? Join one of our six interest groups around topics like the CPLP certification, member networking, learning and technology, south sound professionals, or learning in the purpose economy. Interest group and partner events on our calendar for May include:

No Travel Required for you to benefit from ATD-ICE! Would you like to get a preview of one of the modules to run at the upcoming ATD International Conference? Please join your ATD chapter leaders for this Association for Talent Development International Conference & Exposition (ATD-ICE) preview webinar highlighting the newest innovation around instructional design, learning technologies and the true value of learning metrics.

Register for this webinar by clicking here. This webinar will dive into the holy grail of corporate training is achieving detailed and credible learning measurement, coupled with an engaging and highly effective learning experience. In order to achieve this, you need to revisit your approach to creating content. Adaptive learning uses sound instructional design principles, coupled with emerging technological innovations, to achieve a new level of training sophistication.

Membership Inspiration for the Month

Hello ATD Puget Sound,

I cannot believe it is already May and am getting super excited for summer. This time of year I always like to kick off spring cleaning projects. Getting my home cleaned, my schedules planned and prepare, in general, for these amazing Pacific Northwest Summers. I encourage you to do the same! Consider, both mentally and physically, the following quote:

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." ~William Morris ~

New this month is our Member Spotlight feature. For May we are featuring Michele Millsap, ATDps chapter member and volunteer.

Hello, Michele!

Q: Why did you join ATD Puget Sound and in what ways are you involved?In late 2014 I learned about ATD from one of my textbooks while I was a student in the Bachelor of Science in Workforce Education and Development program at Southern Illinois University’s distance campus at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. As soon as I learned about ATD, I researched it, liked what I saw, found they have student member prices, and joined as a student member of both National ATD and the Puget Sound Chapter. I’m now a regular (non-student) member of both and I have volunteered as a Member Ambassador for the Puget Sound Chapter for a little over a year. I really enjoy reaching out to our new and renewing members.

Q: Where are you from and what brought you to the Puget Sound Area? I was born in St. Louis, MO, but I have lived in Washington State, and more specifically in the South Sound area, since I was about 4 years old. So, my parents would be what brought me to the Puget Sound area. What keeps me here is not only the laid back culture and wonderful people, but the spectacular gifts of nature we have here. I never tire of seeing Mt. Rainier, I love hanging out at the various beaches on Puget Sound, and I enjoy having the Pacific Ocean, snowy mountains, rain forest, desert, and other amazing geological features like Dry Falls just a relatively short drive away. We live in an amazing place!

Q: What do you love most about the Talent Development industry? Plain and simple, what I love the most is the fact that we help people to be able to accomplish things they are trying to achieve, and help companies to achieve their goals. I love helping people feel accomplished and successful! And I love it when the "light bulbs" go off from what I am sharing or facilitating. A bonus is that there are some pretty amazing and wonderful people I’ve met in this industry. Q: Any fun or interesting facts you would be willing to share? I have strong left-brain tendencies that are used often and are very helpful in my work. I also have strong right-brain tendencies and thrive doing creative things. One leisure activity I have is creating artwork. I love escaping my left brain for a bit and losing myself in painting and other art projects for a little while. Triggered by my love of art, travel, hiking, and nature, I am embarking on a new side adventure and will be opening a blog website soon: InvitationToExplore.com. Through my blog I will encourage others to explore and find some of the places and things that I share, represented by my artwork and/or photographs. In the interest of encouraging fun, enjoyment, and appreciation of the natural and human-created things around us, I will challenge and inspire readers to go on a treasure hunt, trying to find the items or places depicted. Some treasures will likely be easier to find than others, but the challenge is half of the fun!Q: What is a career or development goal you are personally working on? My current career goal is to be employed full time in the Talent Development industry. I’m currently employed full time in the accounting industry (lots of left-brain!), and have been for over a decade now. Even though training and talent development have been a part of my various work roles throughout my adult life, my goal is to make that my primary role.

Hurry and Register Today! Only A Limited Number of Places Available for June Onboarding Hackathon.You Should Attend if... You want to contribute to the collective sharing of knowledge and experience about how to make onboarding better. Join fellow ATDps peers and friends for a half-day workshop aimed at hacking the onboarding process.

Participation is limited to 50 people with representation from a cross-section of area organizations. The event is free but there is some fine print -see details on the event page.Post-event we'll share the open source information generated by this workshop.

Back by popular demand, we're reprising the best concepts and some of the most popular topics from our December Learn-a-palooza and adding new speakers/topics.

In response to participants' feedback from the December session, we'll offer a brief keynote speaker, several topics at various "speed learning" stations for you to check out and decide what to dive deeper into during afternoon breakout workshops. We're still lining up speakers and ironing out the venue/pricing details.

The Conference Committee is pleased to announce our call for facilitators for our 2016 Workplace Learning Conference. This year's theme is Our Legacy as Learning Professionals. We invite you to submit a proposal for a Day 1 breakout session (October 12, 2016).

The success of the conference depends in part on the quality, breadth and depth of the sessions we are able to offer. So as you can guess, the quality, breadth and depth of our session facilitators is critical.